The starting point of my new interest were two fundamental questions: Why
do eukaryotic organisms invest that much energy into synthetizing a dazzling array of lipids, when only one lipid is sufficient to form a functional membrane bilayer?
That fact that mitochondria have their own DNA, RNA, and ribosomes, supports the endosymbiosis theory, as
does the existence of the amoeba, a
eukaryotic organism that lacks mitochondria and therefore requires a symbiotic relationship with an aerobic bacterium.